eramus, eremus in eremo
by Xelly-chan
Summary: (that's not his voice)


Fandom: Outlast

Characters: Miles Upshur/Waylon Park

Word Count: 4377

Warnings: jumpy experimental style, some mutual dubcon, dissociation, and weirdly happy endings. Unbeta'd as always.

Summary: "And so, onwards... along a path of wisdom, with a hearty tread, a hearty confidence.. however you may be, be your own source of experience. Throw off your discontent about your nature. Forgive yourself your own self. You have it in your power to merge everything you have lived through- false starts, errors, delusions, passions, your loves and your hopes- into your goal, with nothing left over." - Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

Notes: yeah man im dead inside but happy belated valentines. awfulthinker (on tumblr) remember when that nudes idea came up? well i tried (and failed) but here you go. i almost got it right

*kanye shrugs into the distance*

* * *

_It takes a long time just to get this all straight._

_I'll showcase on Route 7 when I find the right place_

_It takes a long time just to get this all straight_

_In my mind, this is my free-time_ \- Interpol, "Obstacle 2"

::

It starts the way everything does lately. This time they think it was in an waffle house on a saturday off the highway going to Texas from Arizona.

::

Waylon hates letting Miles take the night shift when they drive. He rationalizes it silently to himself (_and aloud when the incentive is there_) by saying Miles always seems to power out when the sun goes down (_with all the sudden laxness of a puppet with cut strings_), and Waylon is usually up with him anyway (_because the ends of those strings-says a voice that belongs to neither Miles nor Waylon but is inside both of them- the ends of those cut and chewed strings are tied to the beginnings of yours, and you know that, somehow. Instinctually, chemically_) so why not make it easy (and give in).

(but these things are little, meaningless to the sum of the whole. the big picture)

On the other hand, Waylon also understands unhealthy coping habits- understands Miles' need for driving, the need to move even when it does more(and more and more and more) harm than good (_he gets it too, the itch, the big city and little town apprehensive oilslick slither of another something_).

Waylon understands these things about Miles (_intimate things crawling dark and interwoven with gray electric snow and wavering rorschach blots burning the insides of eyelids, things like coagulated blood and missing pieces and nightmares in the daylight, in the greenlight, things like sand and the gospels of madmen_), so he doesn't say anything.

(Mostly he doesn't have to.)

::

"Bats." Miles says over the din of the wind whipping through cracked windows. "Bats,"

Waylon bites the inside of his cheek. "I-I'm not doing this." A stabbing pressure builds over his right eye, and he wonders what a burst aneurysm feels like.

Miles laughs, the sound drowning over the wind, ripped and electric and it shakes the Jeep, the (sand) gravel under the wheels a crunching backdrop the whole mess. "Sorry- What was that."

"Too sober," Waylon says, slouching into the noose of his seatbelt. "Too awake. Call again later."

The desert air is cool and dry, and it feels like the epilogue or maybe the prologue of some Great-er Perhaps instead of a redeye'd imitation of an ode to the Mister Tambourine Man; an Australian man in sunglasses over the phone instead of a lawyer wearing a hawaiian print shirt in the passenger seat.

Waylon scratches at the sore red lines the belt leaves on his skin, mindful of Miles' anxious white noise humming, killing time until Waylon (gives in) plays along. Pruritus rings have embedded themselves brain deep with prophylactic tenacity, ink worms braiding into his vision that fizzle and limp away from the sterile dark St. Elmo's fire blanketing itself over the driver's seat.

"They have something for that."

One of the black phones buzz in the backseat, unlikely to be answered like the twenty other times before. Thoughts drift from the (_monster beside you_) to islands, water. Unreachable by tire or foot, Waylon thinks. Knows.

Waylon brushes off his glasses, lets them clatter to the floor mat under his feet. Considers crushing the thin metal, the sole of his shoe poking with glass. What would it feel like. Thinks about an island made of sand in a grey lake, glass bottles at the shore and sharp rocks like linings of teeth on a maw of a dormant landlocked leviathan.

He kicks the glasses beneath his seat. Rolls his neck on his shoulders until it cra-cks. Not worth it in the end. "They've something for everything."

"Wonderful country, oh and isn't it?" Miles creaks, pronouncing 'country' all wrong, harder east coast accent with all the emphasis on cunt, please direct questions to my attorney. (_That's not his voice._)

The shape of St. Elmo stretches out a phantom arm of twisted sinew, melds like tar smoke through the glass casing of the speedometer. The engine roars, a coarse unnatural bellow that sounds like words, like _Are you sure, Mr. Park? Really? What about the Shark?_

"Without a doubt," Waylon says, and presses the heel of his palm into the hollows of his eyes.

::

"Don't think of it like that," Miles tells him, cold hard hands holding Waylon down by his elbows. He's breaking a rule here. It's in the quiver of pulse, marked by a birthmark, so Miles leans down and latches on with teeth. Harsh breath stutters out, and Waylon is hanging onto Miles' shirt as much he can, both hands fisted, cutting crescents into his hands even through the cloth. He has no leverage here. "Trust(_believebleedwatch_) me, okay?"

Living dark curls closer, plaits in his spine and burns probing fissures into Waylon's very being, almost so painfully excruciating in familiarity he begins to forget, just a little, where he ends, where the voice that is his own begins.

_Alright, just stop talking with his voice,_ Waylon hears in the waterlogged corridors of his mind. Burbled as it comes, his own voice sounds steady, more tired than unflinching but real too, not the faded and fading whispers of ghosts, but real. If far away, drowned or suspended somewhere deep and just out of reach. Its reverbs brush along the pull of his breath, rings there like crushed glass and Waylon laughs. Low, quiet: lets that part of him dissolve into the black.

Corroded copper and iron and lead encases his lungs at a slow crawl then, the thin meat of his his hips cleave from his bones, leaves the very last his words to curdle like milk and spill soundlessly over the distant earth. It's easier like this. _I give in_.

He loosens his grip and lets the seething pitch swallow him whole. It's kissing close to his new vision of hell.

::

They don't speak.

::

(_in the thick of sleep without dreams, waylon almost doesn't hear lisa. consonants warm where they press softly against the nape of his neck, he can only make out fragments. behind his closed eyelids, they glitter preciously as jewels faceted by flickering flame. blanket heated hands drift to cup his cold jaw and he feels them buzz like sunbeams over his skin. in that stained glass morning bracketed by the mortal rhythm of their shared breath and the tangle of their limbs, the world lifts at all corners, turning powdery and insubstantial until all that is left is only a transient impression, waylon forgets to feel exposed, cored and vulnerable._)

::

Waylon sighs, let's himself readjust the needed pieces inside his skin, submerge the unwanted rest into the blue of his bloodstream to clot until he once again has room enough, mind enough.

The hard water from the tap is cool, smelling like dirt and damp growing things you find on the sunrise sides of dilapidated buildings, rotwood barn houses, secret pathways behind the garbage dump. It splashes up his forearms, wetting his rolled up sleeves, stinging his cuts and soothing heated bruises.

An amniotic lull fills Waylon's mind, hushing the worst of the wordless murmuring, leaving the world muted save for his own heart beat and a dull, surf like roar echoing in his ears. It's why he doesn't at first notice the rustling, or the sound. Prowling shapes that don't quite reflect in the mirror.

Too lost in thaw of the waters, the sudden noise -the opening and slamming of stall doors, restless pacing of heavy boots- comes through a condensed decade of time stood still and when it finally reaches him, it is all Waylon can do to ignore the nervous jolt down his spine, and(_he can't stop the pit opening up in his belly, a portal to black seamed faces with deadlight irises_) keep his attention on the water circling the drain.

He turns off the faucet, rusted knob whining shrilly. The gray walls eat the sound (to end all) and leave only an after memory in his ears.

The farthest stall from the door cracks thunderously closed, rebounding harshly into the stone divide, momentum bleeding off into an abused swing. Waylon looks at Miles in the mirror, dark eyed and carefully blank; without his glasses he can't see the lines that make up Miles' expression, but there's a guilty shuffle, jacketed shoulders shrugging awkwardly. "Sorry."

Flicking excess water off his hands, Waylon turns and leans the small of his back on the porcelain basin, chin tilted down to keep away the scattering sun glare streaming from holes in the roof . "S'alright," he answers.

(_he tastes pennies_)

Miles grins wrily, a crooked flash of teeth behind thinned lips. A loaded smile stamped in unpleasant sodality. "Slipped my grip. I'm not..." Miles is made of fetters, twisted and warped out of line (_insubstantial everywhere but his shadow_); rust scratches into his ribcage like a recursive disease, breath swelling over sounds he has no control of, over voices he has no name for, and Waylon imagines him being pulled taut. Soldered and stitched over and over and over: no real repair in sight. The smile fades, all the lines on his face collapsing to hide behind his hands. "I just can't think straight. I'm sorry, I'm-"

The split light along the floor and walls wavers as if candle flame breathed on by cool winter winds, bony limbed trees scrape loudly over the tin roof, and it feels like the silence has cracked and begun to run over all those raw wounds. "You don't….It's fine to leave it as is." Waylon shoves his still damp hands into his pockets, pushing off towards the door. And he means it as an affirmation, forgiveness.

And he finds that he means it.

::

At the hospital -wayback when Waylon was only physically holding his insides in place and he could halfway believe death was just the end again and not mercy or escape or a prelude to something worse- he had a hard time seeing colors any more vivid than the patina pallet inside the locker. The iv stands looked like oxidized stalks of metallic moss, the drip turning the foul brackish shade of still water in a sinkhole. His bandages were always brown. The walls pulsed and the shadows moved and everywhere was the feeling of claustrophobia. Waylon had not, for what felt like a very long time, wanted to look at anything besides his hands.

Somedays, he thinks- _thought_, dammit- thought, Lisa was no exception. _(but she was understanding, or at least she tried to be, kind and fumbling and hurt and angry and worried and sad, and Waylon is sorry for that most of all: when he would pry his clammy fingers from her sweaty grip: her eyes, so dark, glittering, and he thought of the shiny globs of filth, of his own blood, on cracked tile, on glass daggers_)

Through the flimsy modesty barrier, Waylon can't remember the first colors he saw Miles in.

Fritz though, and to a lesser degree, Jamie, he saw in child bright colors. Like crayon drawings of redorangeyellow suns. Like fire through magnified glass. Then, Waylon simply couldn't look.

::

The engine won't turn over.

Miles curses, petting the dashboard and murmuring into the wheel. Supplications interspersed with grinding prayers and apologies, a baptismal kiss placed to the 12'o clock hand position.

Waylon watches -seconds, moments, minutes- without seeing, flexing cool fingers inside his pockets, numb and alien and raw and smooth and blue. He smells ice and sand and engine rust, his throat swelling against it until he opens the back door and drags open his duffle bag. The black phone clatters off the seat, thumping mutely on the carpet, but he ignores it.

Thinks, _Later, later, when all is. Is._

At the top. It's at the top. Of course it is. A tin box of band aids, pastel pink with lavender outlines, magenta flower, little yellow nose- curly cursive 'Hello Kitty' below that white face. Waylon pops the tin open, upsiding its insides (_all over all over_) into his hand. He picks the widest one first and lets the rest drop into the mouth of his duffle.

It was a joke, a joke (remember you do), at first, the Hello Kitty band aids. Illinois, the first gray-white days of November, thick candy floss clouds and northern wind that made Miles' nose run red (_like mouths like nails like eyes like_), and made him sneeze, and he could never stay warm enough. November had been a month of huddling close under all the motel blankets, static charge building where they moved harsh, jerking against each other, all hips and sharp lines and sour moans. Waylon had laid in their bed, limbs irritated by the warmth of the covers and Miles' slick skin, and he began to scratch at his arms.

The next day when the air was crisp and the heat of the sun cut sharply into their cleared eyes, Miles grabbed Waylon's arm, turned it over carefully and soothed his fingers over the abraded skin there. It had stung, and the blood smeared into his skin. _Por arañazo de gato_, he had said, the rolling sounds catching rough against too much cigarette smoke and too little coffee. Waylon remembers sneaking a weak smile up and up and up, hiding in the stale ash smell of Miles' loose shirt, soothing both himself and the things inside that shift and wince away from the bright day. He had replied, _Hacerme mejor entonces_, the sleek sounds of vowels and consonants finding an easy cadence that slipped into the grooves and notches left by night and cold and distance. Not quite a salve, but almost. Kissing close.

The jeep sputters and whispers and Miles says, "Please, please, please, baby, please."

And Waylon peels back the collar of his shirt where it sticks to the cleaned out marks. He smoothes the bandage over it, and moves on because that's all he can do. Shakily and only a bit at the time, it's all they both do.

It's okay.

::

_For what it's worth, Waylon never moves very stiffly, after._

_For what it's worth, that's not a whole lot but it's something._

_For what it's worth, there's no need for Miles to say sorry._

_For what it's worth, he still does anyway._

::

"Fucking answer. I'm running rather fucking low on patience."

Miles' snorts, hits seven on the dialpad.

"_Your message has been deleted. You have: 15 messages_," says the feminine drone. Waylon glances at the rearview mirror, sees the disdain darkening Miles' face. He looks better now, just a little. (_but not quite right_)

They're on the road again (_whatever that's worth_), Waylon in the driver's seat, Miles lounging in the back propped up on duffle bags and stolen motel pillows.

The jeep's engine had eventually turned over with a loud whooping cough that shot foul exhaust from the tailpipe. It was like a snap, a sudden and brief opening in the niveous scrim blanketing the forefront of Waylon's mind like a full body thaw starting at the cap of his skull.

They had stared, wide eyed at each other, before Waylon felt his mouth open to say, steady and clear: "Hand over the keys,"

And then they were on their way.

And then that was it.

(_so things are not better, but they _Are _for whatever that's worth_)

"You think Julius sounds mad? I don't think so." Waylon remarks dryly, attention going to the road again. He sounds less exhausted than he has for days, but the weariness isn't gone: sunken bone deep, pooling to settle into his nooks and crannies. (a trade off, of sorts)

He shifts his footing on the peddles, cautiously stretching his right leg, waiting for the sharp ache to spear through the scar, but nothing comes. No twinge, only a dull tightness. He drops his gaze to the wheel, to where the 12 hand goes, and chews his lip.

(_a pit a piece a price mumbles the NEW doctor, grinning terribly wide beneath his mask, Julius shifting uncomfortably at his elbow and Waylon is reminded of Trager at his desk, saying "This is economics, and there's always something fucked._")

"A-nope, he's peachy keen, I'll just betcha." Miles shuts the phone off, and leans forward over the middle compartment. He radiates an uncomfortable amount of heat that Waylon can feel even without touching him, fever hot and scalding like (he's being burned through) Fritz when he was a baby and got sick, so very sick. A pang goes through Waylon's leg. "I hate peaches, actually. The flesh is too soft, and you can never know when it'll be tasteless, too sweet."

Waylon cracks his neck, then lets an easy curl cut through his mouth that tugs on the Hello Kitty bandaid on his cheek. "What about grapefruit?"

A raspy laugh cracks out of Miles chest. "Well, yeah," he says, bumping their shoulders together, bringing with him his fever heat. "Of course."

::

Before Lisa, before Miles, (and even before The Groom), before all the fleeting and pretty brushes of hands and hearts and bodies and mouths, there was blond hair and the bleached bone expanse of sky and and harsh, salt choked words.

And when Waylon holds himself tightly, pinching at his split seams, he tells himself "before"- "before"- "before"-

And if he leans uncomfortably against his own lies and whispers instead about touch, don't touch, please-

Then, later on the dirty tiled floor of some bathroom on some stretch of road in some state, he'll smile behind bloodshot eyes and the medicinal taste of tap water and downers, hunched in on himself and say, in broken honesty, "I-I-I- I've this thing. About touch."

::

Night comes with the jeep lapping at the last stretches of Day, and they hang there in that immeasurable instance between dusk and dark and light. _This is the last stretch._

It weighs down on them, languidly draping over their shoulders in a warm lovers' grasp. Waylon's heart pulses in time with the rumble of the engine as he eases the jeep into the parking lot of a no tell motel, the kind with a droop neon sign that glows out from beneath the dusty purple sky.

He walks out alone to the check in office, stuttering uneven gait on numb legs; nervous ants stinging at his palms when he lays his hands flat on the cool desk. He fumbles with the pen, signature skipping across the white signin page, and he curses softly to himself. Passes shaky smile to the tired clerk with a wooden crucifix tied on a leather thong, says something about still feeling the wheel beneath his hands. Says, thank you, have a good night, and falls back into bruised parking lot.

The world slants, surrounding him with early morning vertigo with all the bitter and passing ornaments of midnight, curdling at his stomach and tangling his ankles. Burning hands catch his shoulders, steadying him, feeling down his sides and looping around his hips and Waylon pushes up on tip toes and blocks out neon light and purpling sky and dizzy fatigue.

Fills up on the stagnant smell of sweat seeped in adrenaline and unrest and they grip at each other neither too tightly or too loosely, pulling each other with animal direction towards their room, towards the washed out bathroom in grayscale, towards the rusted shower faucet with copper tasting water that gets in their mouths and their eyes and runs down the sinews of their backs and they take their first real breath and Waylon tries not to choke with Miles' fingers on his lips. They murmur and they do not hear each other but the sentiment is there, and it is felt and they lay on the floor of the tub and brand the meaning of it into the sloping valleys of their skin until the water runs cold.

Somehow, someway Waylon prys himself from the cheap porcelain embrace of the floor to the cracked parallel lines of tile on raw hands, then rises up on creaking legs, hanging to the stained counter with all the make-believe strength he's forced into his fragile bones.

He stares bleary eyed at his reflection and doesn't feel quite real, feels a disconnect, aimless in the aftermath like the sudden absence of pain that comes with popping a joint back into place. It feels like he's losing time but hardly any has passed, mental stills and lines of emotional code and slick machinery of his heart and his head realign and he remembers everything that's lead to this point, this space, this vertice of this shape of this person, persons, person.

And Waylon-because he is waylon, yeah, it takes time, not as much as cariño mio, but sometimes, just sometimes he needs to remember that again- wipes away the fog on the glass to peer at the tall, comforting shape of Miles, standing now, too, wicking away the moisture from high cheekbones and drawn dark circles and that smile, natural even without the blood and mucus sardonian lilt.

Here, or maybe it's now, they are (mostly) free of the need for large gestures, tells in the form of abortive fidgets; this new kind of lull, noise, static, being, that translates into simple motion even Waylon can swallow and greet like a lover. He turns with eyes that see only in soft sepia tones and moves close enough to touch.

It can be easy, sometimes.

And ever so rarely, it can be real.

Waylon cups the back of Miles neck, naked except for all his scars and shower water. Skin pebbling under the a/c blowing in from the room. Miles isn't better, he knows, because he can feel it where their skin meets, the tiny points of contact and heat. Miles is not better. But he's almost (_kissing close to_) okay. It's enough for the night, enough to be good, and Miles shudders and sags under his fingers and when they tumble to the bed, old springs protesting under the sudden splay of of bodies, Waylon feels his heart break and sink and come to rest somewhere near the base of his spine.

"Hey, hey," he mutters, pressing wet and open mouthed against Miles' temple. Smells nicotine and metal and something almost chemical. "you okay….you with me?"

The silence is beginning to resettle over them, when Miles brings up too hot, restless hands to cradle his face, leans up to lick away the cool droplets falling into Waylon's swimming eyes. "Yeah, 'm here, 'm me. I'm here, now."

It's enough, a handhold, so Waylon hums low around an anxious half smile-half grimace and sinks down.

::

It feels less like waking up so much as it feels like suddenly being awake.

"Hey."

Waylon thinks about feigning sleep, or perhaps try to fall back to sleep and drift into dreamlessness. Instead he rolls over very quietly, brushing his cheek against Miles' slack fingers where he settles. The sheets whisper, light and glowing in the dark room, and Waylon can feel the warmth from Miles where they don't touch. There's nothing special about the warmth.

"Hey."

"It's early, sun hasn't come up yet." Miles says, sleep deepening his voice. Waylon closes his eyes. Thinks, distantly, that it's been awhile. Since he's heard it so clearly. Miles continues. "Feels like I slept for years."

Peeking through his lashes, Waylon wets his lips and says, "Maybe you did."

"Maybe," Miles agrees. He rubs at his stubbled jaw with the stump of his forefinger. "It feels like it," he repeats. "What about you?"

"Me?" Waylon dips further into his pillow. "I don't know. Sound and noise and colors and then nothing."

Miles brushes away a tangle of hair from Waylon's face. "Hungry? Arizona has Waffle Houses, right."

The a/c rattles and kicks up again, displacing the still air in the room. Waylon grabs the thin sheet and pulls it over his head. "Sure." he says, not quite ready to move.

::

They only leave the bed when the sun has risen hours into the day, and it's a slow, reluctant shamble. Miles shivers terribly when the cool air blows over his skin and he is the first to shrug on yesterday's clothes which means he is the the one who has to get the bags from the car. When the door clicks shut, Waylon swings his leg over the bed and walks to the bathroom, taking along the thin white sheet wrapped around his chest and held loosely over his arms like a bridal shawl. The cold floor sends chills racing up his legs and he thinks of hospitals and he thinks of mornings spent staring out of a tiny kitchen window, but there is no smell of antiseptic nor the warm aroma of percolating coffee, only faint traces of sweat and pine air freshener. He touches the mirror where water stains have dried on, leaving heated cloudy fingerprints and absently letting the sheet slip lower.

He doesn't really focus on his reflection, eyes wandering instead to the muted colors and glancing light. He is leaning closer when he hears the simulated shutter of a phone camera. Waylon looks over his shoulder, glaring blandly at a grinning Miles. "Really."

Miles shrugs, the grin widening. "It looked really good. The dark light and your pasty ass skin made all the hickies stand out." Scoffing, Waylon hitches the sheet higher, and brushes past to reach his duffle. Miles laughs.

::

Miles stretches his arms over head, fingers spread and splitting apart sunrays, shaking off time spent in flux and shadow; he turns on his heel, backed by the shining red flank of the jeep, and Waylon understands (a little) why the thought comes as (almost) easy as breathing.

Miles pops his knuckles on his right fist and twirls the keys with his right hand, butchers quotes he read somewhere on a dog eared and graffitied bathroom stall. "'And so, onwards, with nothing left over.'?"

And Waylon shrugs, too big flannel over shirt dipping off his shoulder, answering in kind because that's all there really is left to do. "'Human, all too human.'"


End file.
